3 Farm Marketing Tips During the Coronavirus Pandemic

There’s a pandemic! What can we do to market our farm businesses? Welcome to Small Farm Nation Academy  where I’m gonna do my best to help you figure out how to market your farm or craft food business in good times and in bad.

So I look, I definitely don’t wanna make light of this Covid-19 issue that’s going on right now. It’s a serious issue, we’re all taking it seriously, but it’s impacting a lot of people, many on the health side, but everyone on the economic and business side, whether you got a job or whether you’re running a restaurant, or whether you’re running a farm business, we’re all impacted by this now, we still have businesses to run so what can we do from a marketing point of view, in times like this, to develop deeper relationships with our community, and do a better job to serve and support our community.

Let me give you three ideas, I would like for you to think about right now.

First, a lot of people are at home, of course, social distance thing, don’t go anywhere, they’re at home, what do they have to do?

Well, Netflix of course, but you can actually be their Netflix counterpart from the farming side. Start your virtual farm tours. I know you have a phone, so that means you have a camera and create a virtual tour targeted at the grown-ups. The people that you would like to share your mission and vision and values, with to get them to be part of your farming community in the future.

Now, what you’re trying to do here is you’re trying to smile, you’re trying to show them that you’re safe and you’re really trying to show them what your form is all about but you don’t just wanna put out videos. What you’re trying to do is get people to join your tribe. I know you’ve heard me say this a bunch of times, I’m gonna say it a bunch more times. We’re trying to get people to join our tribe.

So when you put out your farm virtual tour videos, you wanna make sure that you’re getting people to sign up for your email list, now you’re gonna share your virtual tours with people who are already on your list, of course, but you’re gonna be putting this up on your blog on your website in social media, new people are gonna find out about you, so you wanna make sure that you have right there on the page, fin up for our email list so you don’t miss any more these updates.

Now, in terms of how you distribute your virtual farm, tour, I think you really wanna do it as blog post on your website. For many reasons, obviously is gonna have permanent there is gonna have some SEO value, if you write the text the right way, but then it gives you that link to share in your emails and on social media if you were to just create a video and stick it on YouTube or something and then send a email out to people.

Well, how are you gonna share that or how they… Then I’m gonna share that.

And part of what you wanna do is get people excited about what you’re doing, in your farm and then let them and encourage them to share that on social media. You do that by doing a blog post and under at putting the links that say share this on social media, share this an email with a friend, if you need help with that, let me know. We’re let whoever who works in your website know about that.

But to do a virtual farm, to work to let people know about you.

Number two, related to number one, Do a farm educational series targeted at children. You’re not targeting the grown-ups to people with the pocketbooks here, you’re targeting their children who are not in school, they’re at home, and parents are figuring out What do I do to it, et home schools like I do, so they’re not used to teaching every single day and having a curriculum for their children, they don’t know what to do.

So here’s a great opportunity for you introduce your farm in a fun, entertaining way for children. So let’s say you raise animals so you can do a video series from booting all the way out to pasture are from pilot all the way out to getting out into the pasture? Pork operation or whatever may be if you’re growing vegetables seed germination. All the way out to planting in the field and to harvesting. These can be weekly videos. Now, obviously since we’re targeting kids here, our tone our graphics our branding elements are quite different or the words we’re using, the way we’re delivering the content is very different, we’re making it fun, we are in making it entertaining the… We’re making it educational, we’re helping the parents but what’s also happening subliminally here from a marketing point of view is we are positioning your farm brand in the minds of that community and that parent that you’re helpful, that you’re there, that you’re present and that’s what you wanna be doing as a farm.

Now be sure that if you do this and I think you should do this is a good idea, be sure that you share this with all the homeschool groups in your community.

There are Facebook pages in your geography for homeschool groups and there so I, there’s a listing I’m sure locally for who have already opted out of public education anyway, and they’re very likely to opt in to the kind of nutrition and alternative purchasing that you offer in your farm to target those groups for sure.

Now the third thing I think you should be doing here, and this is gonna be uncomfortable for many of you is public relations and media outreach.

Now, I just finish a course on this a couple of months ago, in Small Farm Nation Academy, if you remember follow that course about how you target the media, how you reach them, how you pitch a story what you say, how you come up with sound bites that’s all in that course is really important.

This is one of those great opportunities that comes to you, and look, don’t be ashamed. I’m not talking about taking advantage of a crisis at Hall, but the fact is, we have a crisis, right? We have a national emergency right now, so speak up. This is the opportunity for you to convey what your farm is about the importance of a local foodshed isn’t that what you stand for you have a farm, you’re selling locally. We all believe that having a local food shit is vital to the security of our communities.

I believe that you probably believe that, too, so you can twist that and pitch that into a story where you can share that you’re not trying to sell anything, you’re not trying to market anybody, you’re not trying to do anything that is uncomfortable for you, you’re trying to tell the truth.

And the truth is we think it’s important that our local communities have local food, and you’re doing something about that, so we wanna share that now a lot of times I see posts where people are talking about nutrient density, particularly out of time on a raw milk side, and there’s saying things about how will improve your immune system and all that kind of stuff.

You know, I wouldn’t go there because I don’t have the scientific knowledge to definitely back that up. You can point to things, but when you’re talking to the press, you might allude to some of that, but really I think the main point that you wanna talk about, is that you are here as one of many members of the farming community who are offering a solution to adding security to the local food check.

So there are three ideas for you. There are many other ideas, too. I see a lot of farmers talking about… Hey, we need to start shipping and stuff like that.

Be careful about that because a lot of these pandemics or crises that happen are short-lived, believe me, I’ve met a lot of people who remember nothing about 9/11. So, these things come and go if shouldn’t make sense for your strategically at your farm if you’re trying to become a very big farm, by all means, go for it. But really, most of us are focused on our local communities. And here’s three ideas for you to help you local community. Do your virtual farm tours send that out to people. Have some fun with a smile like this.

Have fun smile, you’re safe, you’re happy. Do the farm educational series targeted kids and reach out to the media and picture stories as always if you need any help with your, for marketing on Small Farm Nation Academy . But listen, if I can be of help to you even without you joining as a member shoot me an email, I do anything I can to help.